


Soldier's Duty

by peoriapeoria



Series: Seven Days [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU, F/M, Historical, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 02:50:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peoriapeoria/pseuds/peoriapeoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wasn't lost in the Arctic for seventy years, just seven days. Twenty five or so years at war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soldier's Duty

Steve falls out of planes with the least amount of silk time and swims onto beaches in the dark. He blows up one machine gun nest after another, leads Marine clerks into victory. He doesn't bring his Howling Commandos with him, they're needed on the European front.

He deviates from stated missions when POW camps are on the way; his Marines back him in this. He's started hearing about camps back West; these men have to look worse. He hopes they look worse.

They liberate villages and he scrawls on Japanese commanders' foreheads. Bleeds out markers with the word Rapist, his mark of Cain. He doesn't know if Command receives his reports of the brewing civil war.

Nagasaki goes up in a flash. It's a new kind of bomb. When he hears the ultimatum, it's a race to get to their codetalkers. He's seen what the enemy thinks is unconditional surrender. He wouldn't agree either.

Peggy comes to Japan, he's in his regulation uniform, clean and pressed. Howard is Stateside. He proposes and she accepts, after making him sweat. They marry once the Instrument of Surrender is signed and honeymoon in Occupied Japan, moving every few days. Steve eats rations while they go over intelligence reports.

China is in the throes of civil war. The Soviet Union in peace is turning from ally to enemy. Steve joins Peggy in England, where their daughter is born. Truman orders the military services desegregated and promises made in the Great War bubble in the holy land.

Steve's juggling action in Korea and being a nuisance to Senator McCarthy and his un-American committee. Even in civilian dress people notice Captain America staring down local Sheriffs in the south. He wouldn't be moving his family soon.

He prepares briefings about Vietnam, and he doesn't know if they are unread or just unheeded. He fights where he's ordered, and does publicity tours as required. He's kept north of the Mason-Dixon line. His pen gets a workout making sketches for the papers unsigned.

Dallas. Steve realizes there was nothing he could have done. He salutes John Jr. at the funeral, then scoops him up into a hug. President Johnson keeps him busy on the homefront. He isn't in street clothes now when he goes to the South. Peggy visits, bringing film of the children. Later Howard shanghais Steve to the UK for his younger son's birthday party and reminds the Congress just who is filling the arms contracts. Steve becomes a commuter.

He fights fires in Newark and Detroit and stumps for Educational Television. April 1968 he's in Vietnam but in June he's in Los Angeles. He sets the slugs he takes in epoxy resin before he's back in rice paddies where he finds he's a grandpa. There are privates that look older than him.

President Robert F. Kennedy concluded Vietnam, and told Captain Rogers to stand down, and thanked him on behalf of a grateful nation for his service. Steve looked closer to Kathleen's age than several years the president's senior.

**Author's Note:**

> I picked the warnings I did because of the period involved and the use of real people in rather horrific moments, even with much happening off-screen.


End file.
